Image capture devices in all areas of consumer electronics, including digital still and video cameras (including those incorporated in mobile telephones), PC cameras, automotive, surveillance, and other applications, acquire imagery using a charge-coupled device (CCD) or CMOS sensor, overlaid with a color filter array (CFA). In a standard red-green-blue (RGB) system, the color filter array is a mosaic of colored filters arranged so that each sensor pixel measures only one of the three primary colors (i.e., red, green, and blue). One common color filter array pattern is the Bayer CFA pattern which includes rows of alternating red and green pixels, interleaved with rows of alternating blue and green pixels. The red and blue pixels are arranged on rectangular lattices in their respective sets of rows, but those lattices are offset from one another. As a result, the green pixels, which are located in both sets of rows, are located on a quincunx lattice, with twice as many pixels as either the red or blue pixels. There are more green pixels in this color filter array pattern because the green spectral response is closer to the luminance response of human visual system, recording most of the spatial information that is consequential to perceived image quality.
As pixel sizes decrease, there may be increased crosstalk between neighboring pixels. One consequence of such crosstalk is so-called “green imbalance,” in which green pixels in the same row as red pixels have different values than green pixels in the same row as blue pixels for the same illuminant level. This can result in a perceptible artifact that can degrade image quality, particularly in uniform areas of an image.